Guilty Pleasures....

First of all:  Merry Christmas! 

I started this blog post about ten days ago.  Things got a bit busy and so it goes that I'm finishing typing this up in Canada...after I had started working on this in Japan.

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Sometime during the past year a friend sent out an e-mail to all those he usually spams suggesting people send in the titles of songs which they'd call guilty pleasures.  Now my friend's tastes in music can be summed up along the lines of eclectic and widely varied.  He does have an ear for music and he can play an instrument competently.  So what he listens to has to meet a reasonably high personal standard.  He sent out one e-mail afterwards with a link to his guilty pleasure.  I took one look and, as I smiled to myself, thought "Oh...that was a bit predictable".  In short, it was a piece by a semi-obscure musician who could be summed up in one word: brilliant.  My follow-up thought was "Where's the fun in that?".

The fun in the situation from my friend's perspective probably lay in an expected reaction of "Oh, you still listen to him?".  Over indulging can certainly equate to guilty pleasure.  But my initial reaction had more to do with my personal feeling that a guilty pleasure should also arouse a sense of public embarrassment for the one holding it.  For me, that's the element of fun in having a guilty pleasure.


I was going to ramble on further but I'm going to cut this short by mentioning that my latest (yes, there are plenty of others) musical guilty pleasures come from the field of Kpop girl idol groups.  Not the statuesque and stunningly pretty variety though.  No.  I've gotten hooked on a couple of units (lets face it: no matter what the country, idol pop stars are more product than just talent) who I'd label as "quirky" or "odd".  The "odd" label applies to a quality which I've noticed: they remind me of mid-80s to mid-90s Japanese idols...which of course serves as a signpost in the direction of my past musical guilty pleasures.... 

No.... I Haven't Vanished...

It's been a while....  November seemed like a particularly busy month.  The first 10 days were dominated by work and my preparations to give a speech, in Japanese, on my experiences in Japan regarding the topic of human rights.  The next week after that was spent fighting a cold which I had picked up from a co-worker.  The last part of the month was highlighted by a life event which got me re-acquainted with Japanese emergency wards.  The highlight at the end of the month was a rock concert I attended in Saitama city.  Squeezed in between all that was the excitement of the Montedio Yamagata's push to make it into the J1 promotion playoff (they finished in 6th place and in December they upset the 3rd and 4th place teams in the playoff to win promotion to J1).  "Monte" is an association football, re: soccer, club which more or less is the only professional sports team of note in Yamagata prefecture.  I attended their last home match of the season.  I got to the stadium a little later than intended and in the hurry to get into the stadium after parking my car I forgot to turn off my headlights.  So I had to deal with a dead car battery after the match.  Luckily the nearest gas station/service station wasn't too far away from the parking lot and so I was able to obtain a jump start and make my way home.  Any ways, I'll go into details of the other things later.


Odd thought of the day:  I was looking at a map of south east Asia hanging on a wall in a classroom.  I took a closer look at Indonesia to see if I could spot where Krakatoa's location was.  I had been reading about the eruption of that volcano a few weeks ago.  I sussed out the location and for some odd reason I recalled reading there had been an attempt to get a particular group of people in Indonesia to use Hangul, the Korean alphabet, to write their language.  That attempt failed.  I had read about that because I've recently taken some interest in Korean pop music.  One challenge which quickly arose from that interest was the question of deciphering Hangul.  So I pulled up a web page and read about that alphabet, its history and the attempt to spread its use outside Korea.  Subsequently I printed off a chart meant to help people learn to read Hangul.  Reflecting on the Indonesians and the chart, I thought to myself "Well, if there were Indonesians willing to try using Hangul then what would it be like trying to write Japanese in Hangul?".  I contemplated that for a short moment.  Upon which I thought to myself, "Now there's something that would really annoy a lot of people...".

On the Word "Demolish"

Last Sunday a friend took me up to Akayu to attend a concert given by Futenma Kaori, a singer from Okinawa.  I'm not sure when the connection between my friend and Ms. Futenma originated but it goes back a little while.  The concert was held in the Akayu Civic Hall which is an aging structure which houses an auditorium and probably meeting rooms and a few offices.  I remarked that the building looked like it could use a fresh coat of paint and I was advised that it will soon be torn down.  If I'm not mistaken, it was erected in the 43rd year of the Showa era which was 1968.  I would hazard a guess it's replacement is being erected using government funds earmarked for replacing civic buildings.  The new Yonezawa library is another project funded that way.

During the following week I mentioned in a couple of classes that I had been up to Akayu and visited their civic hall.  My first challenge was trying to get students to understand what I was talking about.  In one class I resorted to finding an image of the building using my iPhone and showing that to the students.

My Friday night beginner's class seemed to grasp the idea of what a civic hall is when I pointed in the direction of the area where the Yonezawa Civic Cultural Centre (re: auditorium) stands.  I mentioned its location next to a former public square and that seemed to do the trick.  Where I lost them was when I said the counterpart in Akayu was being demolished.  I wrote the word "demolish" on the board and made motions with my hands to indicate two walls of a building falling inwards while trying to impress upon them the phrase "tear down a building".  That got me a couple of very puzzled looks.

I didn't want to resort to using Japanese so I tried to think of something the two students could relate to.  One is a young woman who is works in the Kanaike neighbourhood and the other is a junior high school student.  I glanced at the junior high school student and then I hit upon an idea: mention the fate of Yonezawa Fourth Junior High School in Kanaike.  That school's main building and gymnasium were found to be structurally unsound after the March 2011 earthquake.  Both were demolished and right now construction of the main building is nearing completion. 

As soon as I mentioned that school building and its replacement my student's eyes lit up.  Okay.  They got the concept.  Once I clarified that "demolish" was in reference to the old building which is no longer then things were okay.  I don't want to think about what I would've had to resort to if I hadn't thought of that school.


Post script:  The pace of construction over here can sometimes be frustratingly slow.  I used to have a student who attended Yonezawa Fourth Junior High School.  He graduated this past March.  I had asked him last winter "When will they finish building your school?" and he just shrugged his shoulders.  He replied "Yes" to my follow-up question of "...After you graduate?", which turned out to be the case.  So almost all of his time at the school was spent attending classes in two temporary structures.  The structures are three story buildings made of steel girders and corrugated steel walls.  They're probably cold as heck inside in the winter and hot as heck in the summer.  But I suppose they're a better alternative than the modular wooden mobile home-like buildings employed when I was in high school in North Vancouver.

Small Surprises

The past month or so has featured a couple of small surprises.  The first one came from the realization that young children can have crushes on their teachers.  It popped up in front of me when a six year-old girl drew a likeness of me on the board next to a princess (who I presume was supposed to be her).  Add all the little hearts she drew in to fill up the empty space and yes, I got the message.  Luckily her mother was there to keep an eye on her that day so that drawing had a short life.  As things turned out, the mother had already planned on bringing her daughters to our school on a different day so after the switch I no longer have that situation to deal with.

The other one came about last week.  The father of one of my junior high school class students came by one evening to pay his daughter's monthly lesson fees.  I was teaching at the time so I wasn't there to overhear the conversation he had with our office manager.  After I finished teaching our office manager mentioned something from the conversation she had had with him.  She had asked him how his daughter was doing in my class.  His answer was positive but he went on to mention what had happened to her at school.  Apparently her English teacher, who our manager discerned is Japanese, had admonished her by remarking that her English pronunciation was too good in comparison to the rest of the students in that class.  So now the girl has to put in the effort not to sound out of place when using English at school.  My office manager opined that she couldn't believe that such a comment would be uttered in this day and age.  Likewise it caught me off guard too.  I had completely forgotten about the expression "The nail which sticks out gets hammered down".     

A Small Writing Assignment

The company I work for distributes a flyer each month to students which features a written contribution from one of the teachers.  That contribution is entered in the "Global Talk" section.  The articles usually focus on various aspects of life back in each teacher's home country.  The recent exception was an article written by my co-worker James about his experiences when he first came to Japan as a high school exchange student (if I recall correctly, he graduated from a high school in Shiga prefecture following three years of study there).

Two weeks ago I was asked to provide a Global Talk article.  Initially I was stumped as to what to choose as a topic.  The requester suggested that I use one of the articles I have written for a series of lunchtime lessons I teach.  My response to that was a "Well..."said with a tone of voice which didn't hide the fact I thought that was a bit of a cop out.  She kindly responded "You have an interesting one coming up about the Stanley Cup.  How about choosing hockey as a topic.".  Okay.  She had me there.  She asked if I could have the article ready in two weeks and I said I could have it ready the next week.  It wouldn't take me two weeks to write a three hundred and fifty word article.

My first thoughts about the article were focused on how to introduce the topic to my audience.  I thought of my sport spectator experiences in Japan.  On my past trips here I took whatever opportunity which presented itself to go watch sumo, specifically the grand tournaments which are held every two months.  I've yet to watch a baseball game in person in Japan.  The closest professional team is based in Sendai and I'm not one to take that much time and trouble to watch a baseball game.  I will travel to watch soccer matches.  So I'm content to drive up to Tendo and watch the local team, Montedio Yamagata, struggle to gain promotion to the top level J1 League.  After watching Montedio win their latest match I struck upon the idea of drawing a quick analogy between Japan's two national sports, sumo and baseball, with Canada's two national sports, lacrosse and hockey.

So I put that idea to paper...so to speak.  Actually, I typed it up on a computer in a word processing document.  I had gotten started on the second paragraph when I had to set the article aside to teach some classes.  Upon completing those I returned to the article...and didn't like what I saw.  It was a bit convoluted and dry.  Really dry.  The contents amounted to a tenuous comparison between two cultures and their favourite sports plus some historical facts.  It lacked life.

I leaned back and thought for a moment; what makes a game interesting as a spectator?  For some odd reason "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" popped into my head.  The logical connection to that for a hockey fan...of course...!   I quickly typed in the words to the chorus of Stompin' Tom Connor's "Hockey Song" at the head of the article.  Voila!  It was the blast of fresh air the article needed.

The rest of the article was written up quickly.  Out went the history lesson.  The description of the game was boiled down to "people on skates using curved sticks to try to put a round object, it's called a 'puck', into a goal".  Due to space constraints mention of Foster Hewitt had to be dropped but the anecdote about Danny Gallivan, where a university professor complained to him that "cannonading" wasn't a word, stayed.

I closed off the article with the chorus from "Big League", a song recorded by Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.  I had chosen to write about a moment at a hockey game which I thought was special.  I've been to many games over the years so there were plenty to choose from.  I ended up choosing the Vancouver Canuck's 2008-2009 season home opener.  Before that game a memorial tribute ceremony was held to honour Luc Bourdon, a young member of the team who had died in a motorcycle accident in May 2008.  Tom Cochrane and, if I'm not mistaken, Red Rider band mate Ken Greer performed "Big League" as part of the ceremony.  For me, it was a haunting and powerful moment.  I don't suppose my little article did it justice but I hope I managed to convey an iota of its impact to my audience.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one...

While Listening to "Robots" by Dan Mangan...

I've got the stereo going and as I started writing this blog post the song "Robots" by Dan Mangan was flowing out from the speakers.  I have the volume set at a notch below the middle mark so I can still hear the occasional cry of a cicada from outside.  I think I had commented last year on Plurk in mid-September saying "That must be the last cicada I'll be listening to this year" only to have another fire up and pierce the air with its "Miiinn miiiin" cry the next week.  So I'm not going to go so far to repeat that and say "I can hear the last cicada of the year" here.

Yesterday was a somewhat busy day at work.  I had a mid-afternoon lesson cancellation so I was asked to do a demo lesson for a 3 year old boy and 4 year old girl in the morning.  The manager had written down their names on the memo she gave me advising me of the lesson...she got the girl's name wrong ("Rie" not "Risa").  The kids were a bit perplexed when I had them join me in going through the actions for the song "Ring Around the Rosie".  When I rolled onto my side when the song reached "We all fall down!" the little boy giggled and quipped "What's wrong with this teacher?".  Okay.  I should've worked more on getting the idea behind "fall down" across to them.

I strolled out to a nearby cafe for lunch.  It's located on the main floor of the Kyoritsu Building, an eight or nine story structure with commercial space occupying its lower three floors and a hotel occupying the upper floors.  The cafe is accessible via its rear door that opens into a corridor, a side door or its front door.  I chose the rear door entrance.  To get to it one has to pass through two sets of doors that lead to the shopping area corridor.  The inner doors are automated but the outside ones are hinged and have to be opened manually.  Ahead of me was a middle aged couple.  The man was a couple of steps ahead of the woman.  I hadn't noticed them until the point where I saw the outside door swing somewhat heavily on the woman's right arm and shoulder.  She was a smaller woman so the weight and force of the door pushed her off by half a step.  I glanced at the man and noted his gaze was straight ahead.  He had charged through the door without appearing to have given a single thought to his partner walking behind him on his heels.  That little scene caught me an iota off guard.  It was minor incident but it stirred me.  It reminded me of a remark by a then regional manager at our company who is close to my age but probably a few years my senior.  She once remarked that she felt justified in her choice to not seek marriage when she once heard a man introduce his wife as "the thing" (or something along those lines).  Oh.

In the evening I went out for dinner.  After eating I sat around and chatted with the cafe owner and a couple of customers.  Following that I wandered off in search of a place to get a nightcap drink.  Strolling by the cafe I had had lunch at I spied a couple of friends at a table by the window.  So I made a quick turn and headed in to join them.  Sometime later we were joined by a gentleman who, if I'm not mistaken, is the owner of a pair of local ramen shops which are quite well known.  Apparently his business has a presence in the ramen museum down in Yokohama.

One story the ramen shop owner told was worth noting:  He recounted when he had first started in the restaurant business many long years ago with a place that employed 40 staff members in the kitchen.  He started off as a dish washer and slowly worked his way up the ranks.  As a junior staff member he was subjected to a form of hazing which, if I recall correctly, came in the form of him receiving a blow from a pan or pot directed at his lower leg area and a sharp admonishment that he wasn't doing his job right.

He eventually rose to the upper ranks of this kitchen but then took up a job in another line of work which paid more.  It was a simple case of necessity.  He had gotten married and started a family so his financial responsibilities had grown.  But years later he was approached by a former senior in the restaurant.  His acquaintance had started a ramen shop and he was on the hunt for good people to work in it.  That was the start of a chain of events which saw the story teller end up as the owner/master of the establishment.

The end of the story was the ramen shop owner saying that he did away with hazings in his kitchen once he was the head of the business.  His reason for doing so was a simple "I chose to do so because it (the practice of hazing) had to stop somewhere".  Aye.  In spite of what I witnessed earlier that day, the times they are indeed a changing.

Some More or Less Random Thoughts...

...on tissue paper:

Last week I paid a visit to my local post office to post a card and package addressed to my sister back in Canada (her birthday is coming up soon).  After going through the process of filling out an EMS package form and answering questions about the contents of the package I paid for the postage and was handed my change, a receipt, and two packages of tissues.  Each package of tissues contains 10 sheets of tissue paper and carries the Japan Post Office Bank logo and name in Japanese text on its clear plastic exterior.  They're a very unassuming and simple token of appreciation.

Over the past three years I have mailed a number of packages back to Canada.  I believe each time I've mailed a package I've received at least one package of tissues.  I think I've received packages of tissues when I've purchased commemorative postage stamps too.  If I'm not mistaken, that happens when I purchase two or more sheets of stamps.  So I've managed to accumulate a small stack of Japan Post tissue packages.  Some have plain labeling.  Others have text promoting the sale of year end cards, mid summer cards, or other postal items.

Packages of tissues often serve as the medium to promote businesses here in Japan.  A quick scan of my apartment turns up sources such as Japan Rail, the Yamagata prefecture Orange Ribbon Campaign, NOTTV (I think it's a TV service), Yamagata Bank, and, of course, the Japan Post Office.  I've used up the packages I got from a couple of insurance companies, Docomo (a cellular phone carrier), and a buy and sell store for second hand jewelry.  And...on top of that I have received boxes of tissues from the auto dealership where I purchased my car.  I think they gave me a box of tissues when I took my car there for its annual government mandated vehicle inspection too.

The bottom line is that I've never had to purchase tissue paper for use at home.  I used to purchase boxes of Scottie tissue paper for use in the office at an out of town company where I work offsite.  But I haven't done that recently because I've stocked up there with the boxes I got from the auto dealership.


...on cicadas:

The ubiquitous cicada is an unmistakeable sign that summer has arrived.  Once the weather warms up sufficiently they come out in great numbers to find mates and as part of that process they let out an almost brain numbing torrent of sound.  Well, more or less.  The variety which make that brain numbing sound is colloquially known as "mimmin zemi".  The other varieties, "higurashi", "tsukutsukuboshi" and "kuma zemi" are simply loud without going to that extreme.  But they are distinctly loud.  Two years ago I mistook the sound of a higurashi cicada for a bird.  The mimmin zemi don't have quite that lyrical a quality.  Their cry sounds like an amplified miniature chain saw on a repetitive wind-up and wind-down cycle.  I can only presume it was that variety which the acclaimed haiku poet Basho was referring to when he wrote "The sound of a cicada/ penetrates a rock".

I don't find the cicadas' cries to be annoying...most of the time.  The individual insects which awaken me in the early hours of the morning are the exception.  Usually they're a source of calmness, in spite of the racket they make.  In one instance they were collectively, and unintentionally, funny.

The moment of cicada humour came up when I was riding a bus back to Yonezawa from Sendai.  The bus route goes from Sendai down southward to Fukushima city by express highway and then swings back north to Yonezawa by a local highway.  On that journey I chose a seat on the left side of the bus as that side would be opposite from the sun on the longer southbound leg of the journey.  At one point in southern Miyagi prefecture the bus went speeding by a long grove of trees which were populated by large numbers of crying mimmin zemi.  As the bus passed them, their crying could be heard in perfect unison.  Perhaps it's just me but I found it funny that I could be listening to cicadas crying in unison over a stretch of 50m while passing them on a speeding bus traveling at about 80kmh.  The improbability of it all tickled my funny bone.


...on dairy products:

A few weeks ago I was working my way through a module titled "Broccoli is Good for You!" with one of my beginner classes.  The grammatical points for that module are the use of "any" and "some" plus a drill on count and non-count nouns.  Those are introduced by an illustration of a food pyramid with the "Not good for you" foods at the top and "Good for you" foods at the bottom.  The aforementioned broccoli is in the second tier from the bottom.  Above it is a tier that has dairy products in it.

I don't know how I got there but I found myself telling my students about the importance of eating dairy products and vegetables.  Especially in regards to calcium.  I pointed out a link between calcium intake and osteoporosis.  Of course the word "osteoporosis" was way beyond the comprehension level of my beginner students.  So I used my hand to represent a person's back and curled it slightly to demonstrate the effect of the disease.  My students weren't quite sure what to make of that.  Then I curved my back to represent the stooped posture of a person with the disease.  That must of worked because one female student let out a loud exclamatory "Oh no!".  Ah...that did the trick in that case.  Not sure about to what effect though....